Godewyn de Bois Ardent’s AoA (October 2012)

This scroll is our second kingdom commission, but this time we didn’t know the recipient personally. However, it represents improvement on both our parts: Annys’ hand is stronger, more her own; my whitework is more palatable, and I only made one mark which I classified as “ham-handed”. That’s progress.

We used what info we were given with the supplied text, that this gentle’s persona is that of an executioner, and that he’s famous in his area for carting people to and from far-off events (and where he lives, they’re all far-off events). I spent some time researching period representations of executioners, but found that there wasn’t much of a specific “executioner” image until very late in period, if at all. About when I gave up on that line of reasoning, I remembered the covered wagon image I had found back when we were thinking of building a Pennsic wagon, but I couldn’t recall where it had come from. Happily, Google Image Search pointed me to the Luttrel Psalter, specifically Psalms 102-103.

Covered wagon from the bottom of the Luttrel Psalter's Psalm 102.

Those poor ladies in the windows… travel has ruined them with ennui.

With the deadline starting to show over the horizon, I went back and scoured early- to mid-period texts, looking for something with a nice illuminated capital, and found inspiration in a page from a French bible, created by an unnamed scribe.

They see me harpin’, they hatin’.

I replaced the figure in the capital with a 13th century armored knight based on Matthew Paris’ Martyrdom of St. Alban, primarily because the weapon involved has a rounded end, used for ceremonial execution, rather than battle. Now, on to the process images! Here are the initial pencils, built from the various sources above:

Sometimes you have to swallow your art-school perspective training and follow the source material. That wagon? One of those times.

Then I handed it off to Annys to letter. She has only gotten better with her gothic hand, and this scroll is one her best yet. We tried something different this time in terms of lettering guides; I set up text and leading lines on the computer and printed it out the the scale required, and placed that sheet under the scroll on the lightbox. This worked really well, especially since one of the properties of pergamenata is that pencil smears like nobody’s business. Fewer pencil marks meant that the page stayed pristine longer, so we’re likely to keep working this way whenever possible.